Clinton On Email: System 'Wasn't The Best Choice'

She re­it­er­ated her cam­paign’s mes­sage that none of the mes­sages that crossed her serv­er were marked as clas­si­fied when they were sent or re­ceived, and said that she was care­ful with the hand­ling of clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion while at State.

The on­go­ing fed­er­al re­view of the roughly 30,000 of her mes­sages un­der the Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act has led of­fi­cials to re­dact in­form­a­tion now deemed clas­si­fied in 188 re­leased mes­sages so far.

Clin­ton’s com­ments ar­rive amid fresh polit­ic­al war­fare on the GOP-led House pan­el prob­ing her email ar­range­ment.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a Demo­crat­ic mem­ber of the House Benghazi pan­el, penned a New York Times op-ed that calls for the dis­sol­u­tion of the com­mit­tee, call­ing it a par­tis­an tool to at­tack Clin­ton’s White House can­did­acy.

“A com­mit­tee that can­not tell the Amer­ic­an people what it is look­ing for after 16 months should be shut down. Oth­er­wise, Benghazi will come to be re­membered not for the tragedy that claimed four Amer­ic­an lives, but for the ter­rible ab­use of pro­cess that now bears its name,” writes Schiff, who is the rank­ing Demo­crat on the House Per­man­ent Se­lect Com­mit­tee on In­tel­li­gence.

That drew a lengthy, sharply worded re­buke from Jamal Ware, the com­mit­tee spokes­man for Trey Gowdy, the South Car­o­lina Re­pub­lic­an who leads the pan­el. Ware said Schiff’s call for dis­band­ing the com­mit­tee lacks cred­ib­il­ity.

“It is in­ter­est­ing he made this call con­sid­er­ing Mr. Schiff him­self has only at­ten­ded one of the more than 45 in­ter­views con­duc­ted to date by the Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Benghazi. In fact, save for vot­ing no to cre­ate the com­mit­tee and then at­tend­ing a press event on the now well-dis­proven Demo­crat talk­ing point that all has been ‘asked and answered,’ Mr. Schiff has largely been a mem­ber of the com­mit­tee in ab­sen­tia,” Ware said in an email to re­port­ers de­fend­ing the pan­el’s work.

This week, the com­mit­tee probe of the 2012 Benghazi at­tack and Clin­ton’s email ar­range­ment entered a new phase with closed-door in­ter­views of two mem­bers of Clin­ton’s in­ner­most circle.

On Thursday, pan­el mem­bers ques­tioned Cheryl Mills, a long­time Clin­ton con­fid­ante who was her State De­part­ment chief of staff, for roughly nine hours at the Cap­it­ol. And Fri­day they’re grilling Jake Sul­li­van, who was a top State De­part­ment aide and now a seni­or mem­ber of Clin­ton’s White House cam­paign.